Understanding the U.S. Strike on Venezuela | Explainer
Heather Cox Richardson
1,191,272 views Jan 4, 2026
At about 1:38 Eastern time uh this morning, the US uh
struck Venezuela. And I figured you all would want to hear about that. And I wanted to give you the backstory for why
this matters so much. Um aside from the
people in Venezuela, aside from the fact that Maduro is a really bad guy, aside from all that stuff, there is a much
much bigger game of foot. And um and I just thought I'd remind you of that before Donald Trump gets on the
television and tries to explain to you why this was such a terrific idea. So let's start with the first piece that
you're going to hear a lot of and that's that Maduro is a bad guy and he is that that just is the case. The um the
government of Venezuela was elected originally but then now he won't leave office and he has destroyed Venezuela's
economy. That's one of the reasons that so many Venezuelans are leaving the country and going not just to the United
States by the way, but elsewhere. Um that is not however really apparently
why the Trump administration is going after Venezuela. As you know, we have been bombing uh small boats apparently
from Venezuela. One of the things to be careful about in the news is that uh when people start to repeat stuff, it
takes on a life of its own. So we our understanding is that the small boats
that the administration has been bombing by calling them narot terrorists are from Venezuela. But right now we still
don't know who those people are. So when I use words like allegedly or we think it's worth remembering that um it at
least appears that one of those boats was not from Venezuela. And I say appears because the whole point is this
has been shrouded in such extraordinary mystery. But um the administration has been hitting those small boats, arguing
that the drug traffickers that are using
the country of Venezuela to move drugs are affiliated with the Maduro regime,
which experts say is not the case. Uh, and it's also worth remembering that
when the Trump administration insists that those drugs are killing a lot of Americans, they are implying that the
drugs that are crossing Venezuela from other countries, by the way, Venezuela itself is not a big producer of drugs.
It's a trafficking corridor. Um, they're implying that those drugs are illegal fentanyl, um, illicit fentanyl. Uh, but
they're not. The the drugs that come across Venezuela overwhelmingly are cocaine. And that's what the U
administration has said to Congress that this is cocaine they're going after. But then to the public they're saying this
is killing a lot of people and uh cocaine is is nothing to take for your
health but it's not fentanyl. So there's a lot of fuzziness going on around there. Um so what happened last night
was uh an extension of that um those
attacks on those boats which most legal experts think are illegal because we're
not at war with Venezuela and there's been no due process for the people in those boats and in the past we have
simply stopped those boats and taken them to a port for um for their to for
the legal system to work its course. And in fact, recently at the end of 2025, when the US hit a
couple of those boats and it appeared there were survivors, they called in the Coast Guard to come get the survivors and and do the normal, which is take
them to a place where they can be tried or, you know, arrested and tried. Um, there appears to have been a covert
operation in Venezuela that Trump blurted out on the radio the other day. But now, this morning at, as I say, a
little before 2:00, the United States appears to have um struck the capital of
Venezuela, Caracus, and taken out literally not not killed, but taken away
Maduro and his wife. It appears that his his vice president, Madura's vice
president, has fled to Russia. But again, we're early days here and I'm just telling you what's in the news this
morning so that we have a back we have a a baseline for the background that I want to give to you and why this
matters. Aside from uh from what matters to the Venezuelan people whom I don't
study, by the way, I only know any foreign country as it appear as it is as it interfaces with the United States.
So um so my apologies to anybody that I I you know can't answer any more questions on that. But the story that
matters here in the United States and therefore to the rest of the world is twofold. The first part of that story is
as I have been recording now for for months, Donald Trump is in in an extraordinarily weak position. That is
his poll numbers are abysmal. The economy is in bad shape. the um there
have been signs that the economy is better lately than um than people
economists are saying, but we really can't trust the numbers anymore because he has um uh because of the delays and
so on. That's not to say that the e the economists working in the federal government are all corrupt by any
stretch of the imagination, but those numbers are just not solid anymore. Um, in addition to that, um, the the Epstein
files are clearly a huge problem for the former for the president, not the former
president, for the president as they are trickling out. The Department of Justice has broken the law by not releasing them
as the law required by November, I'm sorry, December 19th. And the ones that
are coming out are are already really bad. bad enough that any other
president's career would have ended. Um, and then, uh, New Year's Eve, the
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, led by Jim Jordan, a Republican of Ohio, released the
transcript of the December 17th interview that
former special counsel Jack Smith gave to the House Oversight Committee about
Trump's retention of classified documents and attempts to overthrow the
government on January 6, 2021 and everything that went around that and that testimony was absolutely damning.
The fact that they released it at night on New Year's Eve shows you how desperate they were to hide it. So with
that backstory, the Supreme Court before uh the end of last year said to
Trump that pre in a preliminary decision, it was not the final decision,
but it tended to show which way the decision was going to go. that Trump could not deploy
federalized National Guard troops in the area around Chicago.
That's what the suit was about. But the implication was he was going to have to pull back his federalized National Guard
troops from every place they are except Washington DC, which is not a state and
which is overseen in a different way than the states are. and Trump immediately um or shortly after that
said, "Well, I'm I want I'm going to pull out the troops from Portland, Oregon, um Chicago, and um I'm going to
go with Los Angeles again. I'm a little tired." Um but but I could come back.
And people at the time interpreted that as, you know, you know, I'm I wasn't fired. I'm leaving kind of thing. You
know, that that this was something that he was going to show his power some other way. And I you need to have th
those that backdrop behind you too for what hap is happening in Venezuela. Okay. So now he has struck Venezuela and
he is taking out uh the leader of Venezuela and the leader's wife. Again, bad people, but he was on the Fox News
channel this morning basically saying now we have Venezuela's resources primarily its oil and the sweet crude
that is off the coast of Guyana. I it doesn't really matter. The point is there there are resources in Venezuela
that Trump is now saying um again he says a lot of stuff but
saying the United States now has control over and that's one of the things that the administration has been saying is
that Venezuela took American oil and we want it back and there's a long
complicated argument behind that but suffice it to say that this that
Venezuela did not take America's oil. Um, that's that's a rabbit hole I'm not going to go down because I wanted to get
to this part and this is actually why I'm here this morning. This is a really
really really big deal that the United States has struck Venezuela. And the
reason that it is such a big deal, aside from everything else I've just said, is because the United States, with this
action, has signed on to the project of destroying the rules-based international
order that the allies after World War II worked with other countries to put
together to prevent future wars. Um, what that means is this. Remember in
the early 20th century we had World War I and then before that had
was even in the rearview mirror practically we had World War II and those wars are just hideous hideous
wars. I mean they're they're world wars, right? And and you know all the stories about both of them. in the at the end of
World War II, the allies uh of which the United States was a major partner
recognized two things. They recognized that the world had to have a better way
to solve differences between countries and they recognized especially
Eisenhower uh Dwight D. Eisenhower is going to become the United States president in 1953 was the supreme
commander of the allied expeditionary forces. And he um he recognized the
importance of this and that is at the end of World War II the world has
nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons are game changers. You know, because what
they do is they say if countries get mad enough at each other and you get a whackadoodle in charge, and he doesn't
use the word wackadoodle, but it works. He's talking not only about political extremists, but also religious
extremists, um, and other extremists who can commandeer a population. Uh, this is
a this is a this is a little bit of a rabbit hole I'm going to give you, but this is a real issue after World War II.
People are trying to figure out why populations will follow a whackadoodle
like Mussolini or Hitler or whatever. And this is the the this is where a lot of my work centers is how do you get a
population to say, "Oh yeah, I'm okay with this." And um and Eisenhower cares
deeply about this. It was actually Eisenhower studying Eisenhower that got me interested in it because Eisenhower
recognized that it was such a huge deal for the world going forward. He was profoundly moved by having seen the
order of prison camp and what humans would do to each other. And he recognized that if humans would do that
to each other in a world that had nuclear weapons, they could literally end the world.
So at the end of World War II, the allies and their and their partners uh
got together and said, "We have to come up with a better way." And what they did is they came up with the idea that
across the globe there would be rules that rather than just having rules within a state, within a country, that
there would be rules for the world. And those rules, some of them were financial, some of them were, you know,
we've got the international declaration of human rights. There are all these different ways that the countries in the world were supposed to work together.
And crucial, crucial, crucial to that was the United Nations.
The United Nations eventually becomes headquartered in New York. And the United States is like the anchor of the
United Nations. And the United Nations matter for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons the United Nations matter is
because it says other countries or countries cannot invade each other. You
cannot just say I want your oil and go into that country. Which is the way we got into the messes of World Wars one
and two. that you must respect each other's sovereignty and then there are
all these ways that we can work out disputes and so on. Now there are people and I am one of them who have always
felt that there was a weakness written into that charter. Um but I'm not sure
that's a rabbit hole you want me to get into. The point here is that there were rules and big countries were not
supposed to invade little countries bigger countries. So if you think for example about the first Gulf War, what
the United States did under Republican President George HW Bush is they said to
Iraq, "No, you can't take Kuwait." And that um I don't know about you, when I
was much younger then and I was like, "Ah, it's all about the oil." But in fact, there was the principle that Iraq
could not simply say, "Hey, I'm taking Kuwait." We pushed, if you remember, the United States troops pushed Iraq back
over the border and stopped. So, you know, you do you, but we are going to
make sure that you can't just take over a smaller country. All right, that's the rules-based
international order. Now, Russia doesn't like that. under Putin,
Russia does not want the international uh the rules-based international order because it wants Ukraine and it also
wants other countries um but pretty openly wants Ukraine. And this has been
a struggle that's been going on. Remember that the the United States, Russia, and the UK promised that we
would respect Ukraine's sovereignty if Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. it did give up its nuclear weapons and um
in in goes Russia in 2014 and the United States stood against that but somewhat
half-heartedly and this is the struggle that's been going on since then uh since
2014 for the control of especially those eastern parts of Ukraine. Um Putin needs
those. He wants those and he needs those. There's all kinds of problems in the Russian economy, which is actually quite an interesting rabbit hole that I
won't take you down right now. But he wants and needs those um those industrial areas of Ukraine in order to
prop up his own rule in Russia, and that's in real trouble right now. Um meanwhile, he also recognizes that
Trump's position, including his mental position, is is dramatically weakening. So, if he's going to get that, he's got
to get that now. So, one of the things that that Putin has articulated
repeatedly is the desire to get rid of the rules-based international order, which he says is threatening him,
even though it's simply saying, "No, you can't take over Ukraine." Um, and he wants to replace it with something based
in the idea of spheres of influence. that is, you'll get one really big dog
in a in a in a in an area and all the other countries are going to
have to do what it says. And that's his plan for going forward. And he obviously
wants control of Ukraine and he wants to continue to influence and and gain
control over Europe. And this is one of the things that Europe is madly trying
to prevent. You're seeing the militarization of the borders with Russia and the the repeated um um uh
defense capabilities increasing in Europe. And they're saying we're we're we're very concerned about Russia
deciding it's going to do more than it is already doing in Europe where it's poisoning people and attacking undersea
cables and hitting infrastructure and so on. there was an attack on um on Poland
uh less than a month ago I think in which a a train track was blown up. Um
so so Russia wants to get rid of that rules-based international order because it wants more it wants to more influence
in Ukraine and it also wants influence in Russia but there's more than that. Uh
Russia can't do that on its own. Russia is not strong. Russia's economy, as I say, is in really bad shape. And Putin's
got a real problem. He's lost more than a million men in his war on Ukraine,
which he expected would take a few days, right? How can he possibly do that? He
can't. But the biggest dog in the world is the United States of America. So if
he could get the United States of America to sign on to that, the game is the game has changed. And this is one of
the reasons that um people a number of people including me have called attention to the United States's
national security strategy document that came out about a month ago in which uh
the United States no longer said Russia was a problem but began to attack Europe, our ally in this international
rules-based order with the US attack on Venezuela.
against the the tenants of the UN charter. The United States is putting
its stamp of at least condoning a big
power attacking a smaller power. And you you know that this is what's going on
because instantly Taiwan, which is very concerned about an invasion from China,
popped onto social media and said, "Hey, hey, we're not we're not buying this. You know, we're not we're still believe
in our sovereignty." And Europe instantly said, um, we still
believe in the rules-based international order because they want to hold off Russia. So what the United States just
did is it said, "We're tossing overboard the rules that have kept the world from
another world war since the 1940s and instead believing that we want to
have our own sphere of influence." And you can see this with Trump talking about taking Greenland, which by the way
in April, in April, oh, feels like a million years ago. Um, Russia, uh, Putin
gave a speech saying, "Hey, take this seriously because the US should have Greenland." Well, what's in Greenland is
of course access to more resources, but also if the US had more power over
Canada, Greenland, the United States, and now South America, it becomes the
hegeimon of the Western Hemisphere here. uh it is a a much weaker position for
the United States than it has had since the 1940s because rather than being part
of the entire globe, we've simply become the power that's going to grab all the resources in other countries, but it's
one that looks very attractive to somebody like Donald Trump because of the degree to which he and his cronies
can do what Putin has done, which is strip the lands for parts.
and put the money in their own pockets. And you know, already we are seeing um
people in Trump's circle reaching for the oil in Venezuela. And there's just going to be extraordinary corruption
around this. Trump has done this without the approval of Congress.
And that's the final piece here that you need to pay attention to. He is claiming
the right to invade another country without provocation. I mean this idea
that these are narot terrorists that are hurting the United States is a fantasy
without provocation and without consultation with Congress. And this was
really deliberate. The first attack on the boats was on September 2nd. That's
the the double tap strike that has you know gotten such attention. But it was on September 2nd and uh within two days
the under the War Powers Act of 1973, the president has to inform Congress
that he has done so and Trump did that and he said, "I'm informing you because of the War Powers Act." But under the
War Powers Act, uh the president has only 60 days to act without getting
approval of Congress to continue those strikes. And Trump just blew through that. He never got that approval. And
now he has just continued with that going into Venezuela without Congress.
Congress under the constitution is the only body that can declare war. And again under the War Powers Act, he ought
to have consulted with them. It appears as I say very early days here that he informed Republicans in the um at least
on the gang of eight that he was going in but not the Democrats which says he
is he is declaring himself the leader of a one party dictatorial state and that's
the the the other piece here when you think about this again Maduro is
nobody's buddy he's just not but There are
the the the way that that Trump has done this and Trump's advisors, by the way,
I'm not sure how much of this is Trump and how much he's he just likes the bangs, which is what he was talking
about on the Fox News Channel. Um the way he has done this not only destroys
the rules-based international order, it also
destroys another guardrail of the constitution.
So when I say this is a really really really really really big deal, this is a
cornered president who is in serious trouble with the American people and
with legal issues over I mean he seems to think the problem with the Epstein files at least so he says is that people
will be embarrassed. They're not hiding those files to stop people from being embarrassed. They're hiding those files
because there's something huge in them. And by the way, I was an Epstein Files
uh skeptic big time. But the more they're doing this and the more we're seeing, the more you know, there's just
got to be something there. Or they would have released them all. And then we've got Jack Smith out there right before
January 6th, which is coming up in three days. And has been a real issue of
concern for a lot of us is that on the fifth year anniversary of January 6th, he would try something. Well, here we
have an attack on the rules-based international order. Here we have an attack on the US Constitution. And if we
get rid of those two things because of the direction and the
ideology of people like Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, the next step
in the United States is to move more and more into an authoritarian regime like
that. And if that authoritarian regime like that
gets its full hold here in the United States, um you can look at Russia now where
there's a very few people who are extraordinarily rich but whose lives are
very much in danger. A lot of them seem to have a lot of problems with windows and poison. Um, and you can assume that
these trends that we're seeing in the United States already are going to be coming here. So when you see people
saying, well, Madora is a bad guy. This is a great way to get rid of him. This is the way the United States should operate.
Be very clear that Madora is absolutely a bad guy. But if you break all the
rules to get him the way Trump has done
what's being destroyed is not simply Maduro's regime. And by the way, um uh I
should have said this. Heads of state enjoy dipl enjoy immunity. There's no way that we should have the right to try
him, especially since we did try and convict
by a jury of the former president of Honduras who was doing the drug trafficking and Trump just pardoned him.
So, as people are saying at this point, Maduro's people are probably looking at how much money it will take to free
Maduro uh if he puts it in the pocket of Trump, which is of course exactly what
Putin does. grabs people and then uses them essentially as hostages. So this
late or early morning strike against Venezuela is not simply let's get out
get rid of a bad guy. It is and by the way um the there was an election in
Venezuela in 2024. There is an elected leader that was not Maduro. Um, my guess
is the Trump administration is not going to put be putting that person in power, but we'll see. Um, but when you look at
this moment, this is a huge crisis for the United States of America, not just for
Venezuela, and it is a huge crisis for the world because of the breakdown of that
rules-based international order that has kept us from a war since World War II. not, you know, we've had local wars, but
we've not had a world war, a war in Europe, for example. Um, and it is a a
direct attack on the US, another direct attack on the US Constitution.
So, don't be fuzzy about what happened here. And this would be a great moment
to speak up to your Congress people, especially your Republican Congress people. The Democrats have already come
out and said, "Excuse me, what are you doing here?" But they are not in the
majority. And a lot of the Republicans started out, even the the the um the far
right ones started out by saying, "Hey, wait a wait a second here. This doesn't look legal." and they're already
starting to come around because generally wars make a president more
popular and they don't want to buck Trump and say um uh you know we're going
to back Maduro on this because again Madora is a bad guy. um call light up
these freaking phones because I I think if you've listened to me before, you've heard me say that we're facing a crisis.
Um because Trump has gotten more and more and more and more cornered. And as I've been saying and wincing the next
three months, which I said three days ago, are going to be hideous as he and
his people try to to maintain control because it's coming down to the line here. Either they are going to grab
control and turn the United States into a dictatorship or the American people are going to take our system back and
we're going to make it based in the law again and not in personalities and we're going to start to enforce the laws
against corruption and we're going to enforce the constitution and with luck we're going to make this country and its
rules and laws more responsive to everyday people. You can see that building. Uh, one of
the reasons I highlighted the Mamdani speech uh, yesterday, a lot of people said, "Well, we don't know what he's going to do." And I'm like, 100% we
don't know what he's going to do. And I'm always a skeptic when a when a politician says they're going to do anything. But the language matters. The
fact that, you know, he's talking about using a government for good anymore, stopping corruption, and so on. Um, this
is the moment for the next, like I say, three months is the time I give it. I'm I'm thinking we're going to have an
answer by May as to what's going to happen to the Trump regime. But now is
not the time to roll your eyes and say, "Ah, we always go into Latin America." The United States has a terrible history
with Latin America going way going back to the 1840s at least. Um that's a
rabbit hole someday that I well not even a rabbit hole. Someday I'll do a whole episode at least on that. But this is
not that usual. This is an attempt to side with Russia to overturn the
rules-based international order and align the United States with Russia rather than with Europe rather than with
democracies rather than with the idea that countries should have their own right to sovereignty. And once we have
given that up, we have not only given up the sovereignty of all nations because
all it takes is somebody with more muscle to come take you over. We will also have given up a significant portion
of the American Constitution and given the president the ability to take the US
military and do whatever he wants with it without oversight by Congress. And so
when those strikes Literally last night I was finishing the letter and um and I
was all set to go to bed. I wanted to go to bed earlier but I was reading the news and always when I finish a letter I
always am thinking about the next one and I was actually sort of shaping out the next two
and I saw the first video coming out of Venezuela. It was I remember it was 138 and I was like no. And then within 10
minutes there was confirmation and I thought this is it. Here we go. On that
note, please speak up. Uh this is this is it. Um and and it's going to get worse. I you know, I've maintained this
all along. It's going to get worse. But the vast majority of Americans want
the Constitution. They want rules. They want laws that apply equally to everybody. They want to
be treated equally before the law. They want to have a right to a say in their government. And they want to have equal access to resources. And my friends,
that is not a radical position. That is the same position that FDR had in the
1930s. It is the same position that Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, had at the turn of the last century. It is the
same position that Abraham Lincoln, took in the 1860s.
That's what it means to be an American. And this is our moment to try and
protect that for the 21st century. Anyway, by my calculation, Trump should
be about to speak about what he's done. You can go hear what he has to say about it. But that's the backstory. That's
what's at stake in the US strikes on Venezuela.
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